The US military removed Korans from a US-run prison in Afghanistan because inmates were suspected of using the sacred book to pass messages to each other, American officials said Tuesday.

The Korans and other religious material were later burned at the Bagram airfield, causing outrage in Afghanistan and triggering a protest Monday with petrol bombs hurled outside the sprawling US base, which includes a large prison.

"The material was removed because there was a concern that the detainees were communicating with each other," one US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

Insurgents in Kandahar and Herat...a venerable old Persian-speaking city in western Afghanistan, populated mostly by Tadjiks, which is why it's not as blood-soaked as areas controlled by Pashtuns... on Monday laid down their weapons and agreed to support the Afghan government.

Ten beturbanned goons laid down their weapons and surrendered to authorities in southern Kandahar province, local officials said.

The men were active in the Panjwaye district of Kandahar and organised anti-government activities there, provincial front man Zulmai Ayoubi told TOLOnews.

Mr Ayoubi added that security will improve as more beturbanned goons renounce violence in the province.

Separately, in western Herat province 20 beturbanned goons including their commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani, surrendered to the government in the Gularan district of the province which lies about 640km from Kabul, provincial governor Daud Saba said.

The men fought against the government in the district, he said.

The commander and their men submitted their weapons to security troops, he added.

In the past eight months, 400 bad turban groups have joined the Afghan grinding of the peace processor in the province, officials said.

Dozens of beturbanned goons have recently joined the grinding of the peace processor in the provinces after Afghan and NATO...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... forces increased military operations to clear the country of bad turbans.

At a court hearing on Monday in the port city of Mombasa, a young British man in a black T-shirt stood in front of a judge and heard prosecutors claim he was a member of a terrorist group, planning attacks against targets in Kenya. As far as the police in Nairobi are concerned, Jermaine Grant, 29, is involved with al-Shabaab, which has been responsible for numerous bombings in Mogadishu and northern Somalia, and is seemingly determined to export its violence further afield.

"You're a foreigner? You look like a foreigner."
"Yessir, Yer Honour. I'm British. Allahu Akhbar!"
"Bloody British, always sending their defectives over here to get shot and blown up, and the suckers think they're Lions of bloody Islam, no less! As if our girls would ever look on such losers with favour. Hey, you there! Clerk! Can we put him up against the wall and shoot him for being an armed illegal alien with nefarious plans against the citizenry, or do we have to give him a trial beforehand?"

Grant, whose family comes from Newham, east London, may come to represent something slightly different to western intelligence agencies.

Over the last six years, they have monitored a number of Britons and Americans flying to the horn of Africa, seeking al-Shabaab training camps in the vast ungoverned spaces of Somalia, in much the same way as their counterparts did on trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1990s.

The agencies believe about 200 foreigners, perhaps Grant included, have helped al-Shabaab wage an insurgency in Somalia, and plot attacks on other western targets in neighbouring countries. But what they haven't seen -- yet -- is these people returning home, and bringing terror with them. The experience of Iraq and Afghanistan suggests it may only be a matter of time before another circle of this kind is complete.

The problems posed by al-Shabaab to the security of Somalia, and the knock-on effects for the west, will be part of the discussions at this week's London conference, but there are no easy solutions, and lots of potential pitfalls.

Al-Shabaab, which means "the youth" in Arabic, is not Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. It evolved into a clan-based Islamic insurgency that became prominent in southern Somalia in 2006, rebelling against the country's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and its Ethiopian and western supporters. It is estimated to have only a few hundred core members, but has recruited up to 6,000 soldiers, sometimes forcibly.

Experts say the group is nominally led by Sheikh Mohamed Mukhtar Abdirahman -- "Abu Zubeyr" -- but most analysts insist it is a disparate coalition with divisions at all levels. Some of the deepest fissures are ideological: between those whose aims are essentially domestic, and those who have adopted broader ambitions for jihad, similar to those of al-Qaida.

Recently, the 10,000-strong African-Union-backed military mission (Amisom) has been pushing back against the group, which has also been squeezed from the south by 2,000 Kenyan troops invading the country last October. There is talk of increasing the cohort of Amisom troops to 20,000. Some say a force like that might crush al-Shabaab -- others that it would galvanise and reinvigorate its followers to greater feats of resistance against what is seen as the west's proxy army.

Galvinize and reinvigorate, leading to greater crushing? Sounds like a plan to me.

The US and British intelligence agencies are increasingly concerned about al-Shabaab developing links with other al-Qaida affiliates, particularly Aqap (al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula), and spreading Islamist-inspired extremism to west Africa, including Nigeria, where some militants have declared links with al-Qaida.

Andre Le Sage, a leading authority on al-Shabaab at the National Defence University in Washington, recently told the New York Times: "What I'd be most concerned about is whether Aqap could transfer to Shabaab its knowledge of building IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and sophisticated plots and Shabaab could make available to Aqap recruits with western passports."

There is some evidence of links between al-Shabaab and Somali pirates, who sometimes launch their attacks from areas run by the group. They have developed working business arrangements -- the pirates pay a stipend to be left in peace.

The number of foreigners known to have gone to camps in Somalia is still small. They include at least 40 from the US, and a similar number from the UK. Grant is facing trial on charges that he denies. Another British woman, travelling under the name of Natalie Faye Webb, 26, is on a Kenyan wanted list.

Though the al-Shabaab camps are not on the scale of those seen a decade ago, the National Security Council has been warned that it only takes one extremist to return home unnoticed to create potential havoc.

With this in mind, David Cameron has ramped up the rhetoric in recent months, calling Somalia "a failed state that directly threatens British interests".

The person being interviewed is Tawfiq Okasha who is a television talk show personality. He is a proponent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and sometimes a denier of the holocaust (although sometimes he says the holocaust happened and Hitler should be praised and sometimes he says the holocaust partiallly happened but Hitler didn't go far enough).

below are some typical quotes from the interview
" Israel, and the European Union are planning to destroy three institutions in Egypt with exceptional malice: the Egyptian general intelligence agency, the Egyptian armed forces, and the Egyptian military intelligence"

"This is a fierce and bitter battle, which began without any shooting, but will end with shooting. I say this here and now. The Egyptian army will open fire on the armies of the enemies. While you are talking to me right now, the battle with tanks, cannons, and airplanes is near."

Unfortunately for his enthusiasm, history demonstrates that battles between these two combatants always end quickly in a rout, with the southern party leaving everything behind down to their sandals in an attempt to reach the apparent safety of Cairo more quickly. And it is quite possible this time Egypt will lose the Sinai permanently, along with the American billions for breaking the peace treaty.

#2
My personal prediction is that the kinetics when they come, will be quite short and very calamatous. Too much riding on this one to risk a prolonged engagement or defeat. We'll kikely see the term "downwind drift" used rather frequently in the news.

#5
Blowhards like this are always in favor of other people putting their rear ends on the line for "the cause". Such scoundrels always think of the military as cannon fodder.

He has no idea that the Egyptian military trained with the US military for years, and would gleefully slaughter *his* kind long before they would entertain any notions about getting pulverized by the US. Which we firmly conditioned them to be aware of.

#6
If you read some of the history of the 1973 war it seems that the outcome was in doubt as the Egyptians and Syrians fought much harder than anyone expected. It was Nixon's decision to resupply the Israelis that saved the day. Of course, the Soviets were resupplying the Egyptians and Syrians as well. With Syria in disarray it would seem the Egyptians would be on their own in a new conflict and who would resupply them this time? But then, with Obama in office, who would resupply the Israelis? If they don't have enough conventional weapons stockpiled Cairo could end up getting glassed over.

#11
You see quite a few Egyptians denouncing, but never in English. Within several months you will see other Egyptians on television announcing that their country is open for tourist visits again - in English. I can't imagine that there will be many takers. Then there will be outrage and CAIR will call us all bigots. Finally we will send them a bunch of aid.

TRIPOLI - Fierce clashes between two tribes in Libyas remote southeastern desert have killed more than 100 people over the past 10 days, tribal sources said on Tuesday. mAt least 113 people from the Toubu tribe and another 20 from the Zwai tribe have been killed in the desert town of Kufra since the fighting erupted between them on February 12, the sources said.

We are under siege since a week. Since the start of the clashes, 113 people (from our side) have been killed, including six children, Toubu chief Issa Abdelmajid told AFP by telephone.

He said another 241 members of his tribe have been wounded in the raging battles with members of the Zwai tribe.

Abdelmajid, a former opponent of Moamer Kadhafi who fought the slain dictators forces in last years conflict, was previously tasked by the ruling National Transitional Council with monitoring Libyas southeastern border.

At least 20 people from the Zwai tribe have also been killed and another 40 wounded in the clashes, said Yunus Zwai, spokesman for the Kufra local council.

People from Toubu tribe are being helped by foreign elements from Chad and Sudan. We have arrested several Chadian and Sudanese fighters, he said.

Both groups were using light arms when the fighting erupted, but the violence intensified, with the two sides firing rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft guns, local sources said.

#2
I'm sure Samantha Powers is working on a plan with Obama to implement the Soros Doctrine plan(R2P)
It worked so well the last time, why wouldn't they?
Expect the plan to be implemented in...well soon, don't rush these things. Obama has to have his vacation first, don't ya know.

#3
Toubus and the Zwais tidying up the gene pool again? Tribal warfare is one of the first forms of effective birth control. Perhaps this is why we're hearing so very little about Libya from the Obama administration and MSM.

#4
We're hearing little about this because 1) the oil flows 2) it's a bunch of brown-skinned natives killing each other so Pinchy doesn't care, and 3) hearing about it would remind voters that Obama led from behind and didn't finish what he started.

Suspected Nigerian terrorists Islamists have opened fire and set off bombs at a market in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, killing at least 30 people, according to witnesses.

Terrorists Gunmen believed to be members of Boko Haram stormed the Baga market and opened fire indiscriminately. Reports indicate that women and children were among the dead.

One trader named Mairami said a terrorist gunman shouted angrily that traders had "teamed up with soldiers" to help arrest terrorists members of Boko Harum. Mairami said the gunman had declared, "'We have henceforth waged war against you'," before spraying bullets on the crowd.

The military confirmed the attack on the market but denied any civilian deaths, saying security forces had killed eight terrorists attackers and had safely detonated bombs planted by the terrorists attackers.

ADEN - Four people including a child were killed in clashes in south Yemen between security forces and separatists, who seized half the polling stations in the city of Aden to prevent voting on Tuesday.

Gunmen from the Southern Movement, meanwhile, opened fire on a polling booth in Aden's Crater neighbourhood, as British House of Lords member Baroness Emma Nicholson was visiting, a security official said adding that she was not harmed. The attack came despite a heavy security detail accompanying Nicholson's every movement in the city, witnesses said.

One Yemeni soldier was wounded in the attack, said the official.

Activists from the Southern Movement, who say the election fails to meet their aspirations for autonomy or southern independence, have boycotted the referendum in which Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi is the sole consensus candidate. But some hardline factions have vowed to mark Tuesday's presidential vote as a day of "civil disobedience" to prevent voters from casting their ballots.

In Aden, the main southern city, a 10-year-old child was killed when separatist militants traded gunfire with police near the election commission headquarters in the Dar Saad neighbourhood, residents and medics said.

In Aden's Mansura neighbourhood, a stronghold of the Southern Movement, gunmen killed a policeman. Several other people were wounded in ongoing clashes between separatist militants and troops throughout the city.

In the southeastern town of Mukala, separatists attacked a polling station killing a soldier, a military official said.

In Lahij province, a protester was killed and two others were wounded in clashes between hardline southern militants and security forces, activists from the movement said.

"Half of the polling booths in Aden have been shut down after they were seized by gunmen from the Southern Movement," a local government official told AFP. He said 10 out of the city's 20 voting stations were closed due to the violence.

According to witnesses, militants stormed the booths and confiscated ballot boxes as security forces, which were deployed to guard the stations, withdrew from their posts. Militants also used rocks to block roads and set tyres on fire to disrupt the movement of people in Aden, where at least one polling station was set ablaze, witnesses said. No casualties were reported.

Officials said earlier that a total of 103,000 soldiers were deployed to guard polling stations.

Mexican Policia Federal (PF) units seized 37 weapons including machine guns and more than 25,000 rounds of ammunition as well as four C4 demolition charges following Monday morning's armed confrontation with criminal suspects in Fresnillo, Zacatecas, according to a post at the Secretaria de Seguridad Publica (SSP) website Tuesday evening.

According to the news release, Policia Federal units originally caught suspects in two vehicles carrying heavy rifles, a Mexican police term for assault rifles, and began countermeasures, which led to the gunfights.

According to a news article at the website of El Sol de Zacatecas news daily, one of the suspects who died in the gunfight was identified as Armando Delgado Costilla, 22 of Fresnillo, Zacatecas.

One unidentified Policia Federal agent was wounded along with a two year old child. Both the agent and the young child are expected to survive their wounds.

In another confrontation Monday evening in Zacatecas, Policia Federal units shot and killed unidentified man said to be a member of organized crime.

The confrontation took place in the village of Calera in Ramon Lopez Velarde municipality, where PF units on patrol came under small arms fire from armed suspects travelling aboard a vehicle. PF returned fire apparently hitting and killing the suspect.

A 29-year-old Moroccan man accused of trying to bomb the U.S. Capitol building is scheduled to appear at a court hearing Wednesday in Virginia.

Amine El Khalifi was nabbed last week after allegedly trying to attempt the suicide attack, the Justice Department said. On Friday, the suspect went to a parking garage near the Capitol building and received what he believed was a vest with explosives and a firearm. He was arrested before exiting the garage and charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against government property.

The FBI has removed hundreds of counterterrorism training documents after a months-long review found inaccuracies and other problems in their description of Muslims.

The review was triggered after a September blog in Wired magazine So the FBI are taking their marching orders from... Wired?Someone at Media Matters got to Wired, apparently...
revealed training documents that reportedly called the Prophet Muhammad a "cult leader," claimed "devout" Muslims have been generally violent for hundreds of years and made other controversial statements.Ok so what was the reason for removing the documents?
The FBI did not get into details about which documents were taken out, but a law enforcement source confirmed to Fox News on Tuesday that hundreds were removed because they were deemed "not consistent with the highest professional standards and the FBI's core values."

"As a result of that review, we found that the overwhelming majority of our counterterrorism training materials met the FBI's standards on Political Correctness and Enemy Ass Kissing," Allen said in a statement.
Allen also said the FBI has been communicating with advocacy groups since the beginning of the review process to explain what happened and what "corrective actions" would be taken. As opposed to telling them to take a FF at a rolling doughnut.
"The Muslim American community is an essential partner in our efforts not only to prevent terrorism, but to address other crime concerns that affect communities, including the protection of civil rights," Allen said. I take this to mean that CAIR and their masters the Muslim Brotherhood and Ham-Ass have veto-power over FBI training documents.
The Wired article detailed, among other materials, a presentation that included a graph that tracked followers of the Bible, Torah and Koran over hundreds of years. It showed "devout" followers of the Torah and the Bible becoming less violent over time, while "devout" followers of the Koran remaining as violent in 2010 as they were hundreds of years ago. In other words - an accurate graphic. Can't have that!
Al-Marayati, whose group attended the most recent meeting with Mueller, urged the bureau to seek more marching orders "feedback" in the future when developing its training guidelines on any group.

A strategic plan on homegrown terror released in December did not use the term radical Islam once, But I believe it mentioned 'Conservatives' and 'Christians' several times.
though it did discuss Al Qaeda and those groups inspired by it. A Defense Department letter in October also classified the Fort Hood massacre as "workplace violence."

This Political Correctness and Multiculturism BULLSHIT is going to be the death of us all.

#3
Just one more blow to intellect and morals. This is right up there with the kerfuffle over the use of "chink in the armour".

As any literate person knows a chink is a fissure or crack which boat builders and log house builders know has to be filled in. The chink in the armour is where you stick the pointy weapon to kill the knight.

Another word profaned by the PC brigade along with gay and niggardly. This cult of he who gets offended first wins will be the death of us.

#4
I once used the word "titillate" in front of a college class some years ago and got reported to my boss by a student (It was a male by the way). He thought I was talking about female breasts. PC coupled with ignorance is a dangerous combination. I then realized that we were heading towards mass insanity.

#6
Oh I agree moose. And much like the Border Patrol agents in the field (or the ones which haven't been imprisoned yet for not being PC enough...) and I'm sure the ICE field agents sneer at the asinine polices being forced upon them from on-high.

Pakistan will ask Interpol for help in arresting former president Pervez Musharraf for his failure to prevent the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, the country's interior minister has said.

Rehman Malik said the government was seeking Musharraf's arrest because he allegedly failed to provide adequate security for Bhutto, who was killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack in 2007. He made the comments in a televised address to lawmakers in Sindh province, Bhutto's political stronghold.

Interpol, based in Lyon, France, had no immediate comment.

Either they think the request silly, or the receptionist was out to lunch.

Musharraf, a one-time US ally, went into self-exile in Britain in 2008 after being forced out of the presidency he secured in a 1999 military coup. The current government is being run by Musharraf's political rivals, and the president is Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari.

A Pakistani court issued an arrest warrant for Musharraf last year over the allegations.

Musharraf, an ex-army general who wants to return to Pakistan to contest what will be bitterly contested elections likely this year, said the government was playing politics over the case. Musharraf has repeatedly denied any legal responsibility for the killing.

"This is all politics," he told ARY television station on Tuesday. "It's just point scoring and nothing else."

Legal expert Hashmat Habib said Interpol has the right to detain Musharraf and hand him over to Pakistan if it chooses to issue a warrant. But it is unclear how the international police organisation will respond, or indeed whether Malik will go ahead with his threat.

It was silly, then. Perhaps the receptionist had to take a call of nature.

The former prime minister was killed on 27 December 2007, shortly after returning to Pakistan to campaign in elections Musharraf agreed to allow after months of domestic and international pressure.

PESHAWAR: An explosive device planted in a motorcycle in the citys Mathani area went off on Tuesday. The motorcycle was destroyed in the explosion and no casualty has been reported.

According to police, a low-intensity bomb fitted on a motorcycle that was parked in the busy Mathani bazaar caused the explosion. Mathani is a restive area bordering the Frontier Region. Police have started their investigation into the incident.

WASSIT / Aswat al-Iraq: Policemen on Monday arrested two al-Qaeda members during a raid in northern Wassit, the local police chief said.

Police forces arrested on Monday morning (Feb 20) an al-Qaeda leader during a raid in al-Mazraa district in al-Suwiera, north of Kut city, General Hussein Abdulhadi told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

The forces managed to detain another al-Qaeda element at a checkpoint in northern Kut, while he was attempting to enter the city with a fake ID, he added.

The two are wanted for their involvement in implementing armed operations against civilians and security forces in the province, he explained, pointing out that the two operations were based on intelligence information.

Four paramilitary rangers were wounded when suspected terrorists insurgents detonated a bomb near a railway line in Narathiwat province Wednesday.

The homemade bomb exploded around 9 a.m. as a six-man squad from ranger unit on a pickup truck passed a local bridge. Terrorists Insurgents hidden in a roadside rubber plantation detonated the device.

Security officers inspecting the blast scene managed to disarm another bomb buried in a 20 kg fire extinguisher cylinder. They believe the terrorists insurgents meant to attack officials arriving to investigate the first explosion.

A U.S. and a French journalist were killed by shelling in Homs today. The deaths of American Marie Colvin and Frechman Remi Ochlik were confirmed by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. They come less than a week after New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid died in northern Syria from an apparent asthma attack and a day after well-known Syrian opposition Rami al-Sayed journalist died in Homs.

Colvin wrote for the British Sunday Times. Like Shadid, she was considered one of the best foreign correspondents in the world. Ochlik was a freelance photographer who recently won a 2012 World Press Photo prize for a photo from the Libyan revolution.

John Witherow, the editor of the Sunday Times, called Colvin an "extraordinary figure."

He said, "She believed profoundly that reporting could curtail the excesses of brutal regimes and make the international community take notice. Above all, as we saw in her powerful report last weekend, her thoughts were with the victims of violence."

Colvin and Ochlik were in a house in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs, the district hardest hit by almost three weeks of relentless shelling that has left hundreds dead. Video posted to YouTube purported to show their bodies in a house destroyed by tank shelling.

BEIRUT/GENEVA: Syrian government forces killed more than 60 people on Tuesday in assaults on villages and an artillery barrage in the restive city of Homs, activists said, and the Red Thingy Cross called for daily cease-fires to let in urgently needed aid.

Activists said at least 30 people died in the bombardment of the Baba Amro neighborhood of Homs city, and at least 33 were killed when forces trying to crush opposition to President Bashar Assad stormed villages in northern Idlib province.

In Damascus, security forces opened fire on demonstrators overnight, wounding at least four, activists said. Violence in has hit the capital over the past week, undermining Assads assertion that the 11-month-old uprising against his rule is limited to the provinces and the work of saboteurs.

The International Committee of the Red Thingy Cross said it had asked authorities and rebels to agree daily cease-fires so life-saving aid can reach civilians in hard-hit areas including Homs.

It should last at least two hours every day, so that ICRT C staff and Syrian Arab Red Moon-Shaped Thingy Crescent volunteers have enough time to deliver aid and evacuate the wounded and the sick, ICRT C President Jakob Kellenberger said.

Activists said government forces launched the artillery attack on Homs after rebel fighters holding the opposition Baba Amro district blocked troops from entering.

Several shells are falling each minute, activist Nader Al-Husseini told Reuters from the district, adding that at least two children were among the victims.

Another activist in the city said: We have now at least 30 killed. One family is among them. A third said: Others are still buried. Today the shelling is very fierce.

The British-based opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces had stormed villages in Idlib province in the north of the country.

The army stormed the village of Abdita and chased people in Iblin and Balshoon. They killed 33 people. All are civilians, the group said.

Activists in Homs said government forces backed by armor have been closing in on Baba Amro neighborhood, since the offensive on the city began on Feb 3. Tanks are deployed in the Inshaat district next to Baba Amro, opposition sources said. The Observatory said a convoy of more than 50 armored vehicles was seen heading from Damascus toward Homs.

A city of one million people on the Damascus-Aleppo highway, Homs has been at the heart of the uprising against Assads 11-year rule. Residents say they are running short of medicine and food, and are massed together in crowded homes to seek shelter. International rights and aid organizations say hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks in Homs.

A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.